Six years old. I was six years old when my parents were divorced. I was eight when my mother went to jail for the first time. I was ten when my mother was diagnosed with bipolar. I was eleven when I was tested for bipolar. Throughout my life, I had to tiptoe around my mom. I can not raise my voice, I can not talk about my day when she is upset and, I can not be lazy. There were always rumors that my mother was bipolar or even a narcissist. The woman that was supposed to be caring and supportive left me in the dust too many times. The motherly role that she was supposed to portray was swept to the side because of her mental illness. I know I can not blame her as she did not choose that. However, I had to grow up because she could not get it under control. She let it consume her life and decided to pair her illness with alcohol, a pair that could damage the best of souls. With the dynamic duo in town, she destroyed her life in two short minutes. A DUI, three letters that I knew had a negative connotation before I even knew how to write a paragraph. She was gone. Gone before I even knew what bipolar meant before I even knew alcohol could destroy a person's life so fast before I even knew what the letters to shift in a car were. Her leaving was not even the worst part of my childhood. It was when she came back. If anyone asks who raised my little sister, and who was her prominent motherly figure I will always say that I did. I deserve that credit because bipolar caused my mother not to act nurturing. To this day I swear she did not even know what nurturing meant. I was in seventh grade when my mother got out of jail. It was during the major 2016 election, my classmates discussed how they hated Trump and how women should not be president. All I could think about is how my life was about to take a complete 360 from one I just got comfortable with. She got out and got an apartment. However, I did not know that a boy was stringed along in her games. It was a two-bedroom apartment. One for her and the boy and one for my sister and me. We had a bunkbed and she slept on the couch every weekend. They fought a lot, alcohol was always in the equation and sometimes she begged my dad for us to stay longer and others she begged him to not have us come over. They broke up and my world again was flipped on its side. The theme of this story is her relationships. They end and she gets into another again. The next relationship she was in was the most detrimental one. At first, it was bliss, I knew it was too good to be true. She hit him, she lied saying he hit her. My sister and I found alcohol in her car after she assured us she was sober. She drove. She got caught. Bipolar was not her whole life but paired with alcohol it was her. It was out of control and she got caught. To this day she blames it on the boys she dated, not her own mistakes. She was constantly flipping my life. The mental illness affected my life in a way that it should not. That is why we need awareness.

Throughout my childhood, and most likely throughout my life, there have been a multitude of comments about my weight. There was always the, you’re so skinny comments, or the you don’t need to eat so much comments. I have gotten it from family members, friends or even random strangers on the street. My family would ask if I had bulimia. I was 8. No, I didn’t have an eating disorder that young but it is beyond frustrating how people use it as an insult. I did not even realize I had an eating disorder until I got over it. I used food as a way to get back at my parents when they made me upset. Using the excuses, oh I’m not hungry, I just ate, or say nothing at all. However, I do jump back and forth between my eating disorder, it’s not as intense as it once was but, it’s still a struggle sometimes to get over the past habit. Those habits made me realize how manipulative society standards and personal standards are. While we are getting more inclusive it is far from perfect. I am a proud advocate for eating disorders in my school. Multiple people come up to me or talk to me through social media about their struggles. They confide in me. I hope to carry that advocation through college. It impacts so many lives yet there is still a huge stigma around it. I hope the college I go to can help me advocate for it. However, I will admit this type of advocating is hard. The very least I can do for my college is to create a social media platform for my school. It is the easiest way to get the word around. I want to help those who struggle because college is also a major factor in eating disorders. The small budget, not so great hall food and the long days all feast upon those susceptible to eating disorders, myself included. Frankly, I am terrified I am going to resort back to my old habits because of it. At the very least I hope there is another person advocating for this too. Advocating is the only way for voices to be heard. While this isn’t something that can be changed, it is something that needs to be heard. I hope in my college experience that I won’t have to hide my life, I hope that stigmatizing diseases is a thing in the past.

My life has had many twists in turns throughout my 17 years of living. My past is a constant reminder of what I want to do in the future. Growing up I had two social workers. At first as a child, I really had no connection to the importance of their job. However, as I grew and matured I realized how much of an impact they have left on my development. That is exactly why I want to do just that. They of course could not fix my problems but they made adjusting to them so much easier. I work with kids from all walks of life. I see social workers in the lives of other kids on a day-to-day basis. While the kids do take it for granted I see it as a win for them. They have that resource to provide them with some sort of stability in their crazed life. That is what all kids need and a majority of them lack that bare necessity. I want to provide kids with a comfortable space and environment for them to use by any means necessary. That is how kids develop. We need to show them at a young age that stability is always accessible and I want to provide them with that aid. I grew up never having a set home with my mother. I was always traveling to different homes and apartments. None of them were ever pernament and when she left I felt apart of me leave too. Those social workers were always there, they never left. I was always distant with them but I knew they were important regardless of how embarrased I was of it. My mother is an alcoholic, she is majorly addicted to alcohol which is why I needed a social worker in the first place. She had a very rough childhood too. That is why she got so addicted because it was an easy outlet. Not only that but she is also addicted to nicotine in cigarettes. She started young as well. Addiction is an easy and accessible outlet for major deep-rooted childhood trauma. As long as those drugs are accessible they will forever be an easy outlet. No matter what age they raise narcotics and alcohol someone will be dealing it to young people. It is an epidemic. The thing is addicts almost always never fully quit. They can't. They need an outlet and nothing is as quick and easy as those drugs. I know I will have to deal with addicts in the field but at heart, they are still humans with a wide range of emotions that just need someone to be reliable. That is all they are lacking. Drugs and alcohol are reliable, they want stability. That is why we need social workers to be reliable.

The best advice I could give someone to learn how to have more empathy is working with children. I work at a boys and girls club and seeing some of the children go through horrible things is what keeps me empathetic. Some of those kids have horrible family lives with abusive or neglectful parents. For those who have not worked with kids if they have had a bad day or something they most likely will act out in order to show their emotions. Children learn best when we mirror those emotions. When I ask a child how their day was after they were acting out I immediately go for a softer tone. They don’t want someone yelling at them even more if they had a bad day. That’s when I realized absolutely no one wants that. If someone is upset I immediately treat them as a mutual. I don’t talk down to them or at them. I try to understand them. That is simply what everyone deserves. Empathy is respect.

My mother has made almost every mistake in the book. Her mistakes showed me exactly what not to do. When I was ten she went to jail for drinking and driving. There are a multitude of lessons that I have learned from that experience that shaped how I act today. The most obvious one being to not drink and drive, those actions don’t just affect you, they affect everyone associated with you. I would never even imagine drinking. The next lesson I learned was that growing up without a mother is hard and was uncommon where I lived. I had to go through puberty without her, do my homework by myself, and be a mother to my little sister. The hardest part was pretending I was okay. Everything in life is about appearances. I had to keep up this facade that my mother was in the picture. It is devastating to a developing mind to pretend. It taught me to lie, to be untruthful. Of course, all children lie but I had to take it to a new level. Which however, I am not mad that I experienced that. Who knows how I would have turned out today. I am more confident now. I don’t exactly care what some of my peers think of me. Going through traumatic experiences happens to almost everyone. So what’s the point of hiding it? Those experiences showed me to be a better person. I aim to be the best version of myself, even if my mother was not.